We've been making a number of improvements to the 3D Fractal Trees in
IRender nXt
and our other rendering products.

Rendering Plants as 2D images
nXt Plants render as full 3D, fractal images - meaning to more
you zoom in on the scene before rendering, the more detail you will see.

However for many uses - especially for background trees - you can
save rendering time, while still getting great results, by rendering a
2D image of the tree rather than the full, fractal, 3D tree.
Here is a rendering of two plants - zoomed in - the one on the
left is rendered as a 2D image, the one on the right is rendered as a
3D, Fractal plant. If you look closely you can see the better detail in
the 3D, Fractal plant.

However, if you are not zoomed in closely on the trees, the 2D images will often work just fine.

Lighting Channels is an important new feature of IRender nXt which
lets you quickly adjust light sources.
By assigning channels to sun, sky, and groups of lights, you can quickly
adjust the intensity of each channel with a slidebar and immediately
see the effect on the final rendering.

You can quickly adjust the intensity of each channel with a slide
bar and immediately see the effect on the final rendering. This will
saves time both in determining the relative intensities to use for light
sources and in fine tuning the final image before publication.

In Version 3.5, Lighting Channels are integrated into the Batch Renderer, as well as used separately with the nXt Image Editor.

Auto Reflection

Auto Reflection makes materials with words like metal or
plastic in them reflective based on the words in the material name -
without having to set material properties for each material
individually.
This can make it easier to get photo realistic results from
models - especially models with components in them which use materials
which you did not create or define - without having to spend time to set
basic reflection, or other material properties on each the materials.

For example, you can specify that all materials with the word "steel" in them should be 90% reflective and metallic.

Any materials with the matching words in them, and for which you
have not already set specific material properties, will get the
properties from the Auto Reflection Wizard.
(If you do set material properties your self for a material, those settings will override the Auto Material settings.)